


Communications

by MyOwnSuperintendent



Series: Signs [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Gen, Martha's Vineyard Sign Language AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2019-01-01 02:01:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12146232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyOwnSuperintendent/pseuds/MyOwnSuperintendent
Summary: After a broken arm lands him in the hospital, Mulder meets a nurse who knows sign language and perhaps can help him on his quest to find his sister.  Sequel to "Signs."





	Communications

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own The X-Files or anything related to it. Hope you enjoy!

Maybe there are worse injuries, but a broken left arm is certainly up there.  The nurse was polite enough for the first few minutes, until she realized that he couldn’t hear anything she said, and then she got steadily more and more annoyed.  At first she tried writing her questions down on a piece of paper, but when she pushed it towards him he couldn’t write any answers, of course, because his arm was broken.  He tried pointing at it with his right arm and grimacing, to indicate what the problem was, and she made an irritated face and stalked down the ward and came back with a doctor.  The doctor was clearly trying to ask him questions too, and again he couldn’t answer, and now the doctor looks annoyed too, which is frankly making him annoyed as well.  They’re acting as if he’s purposely trying to make things difficult for them, which he certainly isn’t, and after all he’s the one in pain here.  The doctor says something to the nurse, finally—again, he has no idea what—and then they both go out of the room, leaving him alone in his bed at the end of the ward.  He briefly wonders if they’ve just given him up.  They seem the kind of people who would do that. 

But the doctor comes back, eventually.  He has a nurse with him, but it’s not the same nurse.  This nurse is a small woman, with red hair, and she smiles at him before she signs, _Hello.  You’re deaf?_

They’re not the same signs he habitually uses, not the ones from back home; they’re the new ones, the ones that started at the school where they were supposed to send him, where they sent Samantha instead.  He’s learned some of them.  He wouldn’t call himself fluent, but right now he’s happy enough to see someone with whom he can communicate in any form, and this nurse seems like a godsend.  _Yes_.

She says something to the doctor, then turns back to him.  _And you can’t write?_ Her hands move slowly; he would guess she isn’t fluent either, and that, along with the talking to the doctor, suggests to him that she isn’t deaf.  He wonders how she knows the signs. 

 _I can, usually, it’s—_   He’s so used to using his left hand that he doesn’t think, and he breaks off, wincing with the pain.  No, he really can’t imagine an injury he’d like less. 

 _Is it your arm?  Your left arm?_ the nurse asks, and when he nods she adds, _Don’t try to use the bad one.  What happened?_

It’s very hard to tell the story, when he’s confined to using only the one arm, and he can only hope she’s not as frustrated as he is, but he manages to get the key points across, through a combination of signs and general pantomime.  _Running.  Slipped.  Fell on it._

She confers with the doctor again, who comes forward to examine his arm, prodding it in a painful way.  He says something to the nurse, who nods.  _It’s broken_ , she tells him, and he nods; he would have told them that from the beginning, if he could.  _We—we—_   She stops and says something to the doctor, who hands her the paper that the first nurse left.  She takes the paper and writes something down for him.  They’re going to set it, he reads, and it will be painful but it looks like a simple break and it shouldn’t take very long.

She’s honest, this nurse, in addition to her other helpful qualities.  She didn’t lie about the pain, and he grits his teeth against it, but she didn’t lie about the time either, and soon his arm is bound up.  She sits beside him through it, handing things to the doctor, at one point patting his other hand.  _Almost there._

 _We’re done_ , she signs when the doctor is gathering up his instruments.  _Can you sleep?  Should we_ something or other, he doesn’t know all of the signs she’s using.  He nods towards the paper, and she writes again, asking if he wants anything to help him sleep.

He doesn’t want to be given anything, doesn’t trust it, so he manages an approximation of _No, I can sleep_. 

She smiles.  _Good.  Sleep well._

It’s hard to find a comfortable position, with his arm like this, and he lies awake for a long while, still convinced that this is the worst injury he could have suffered.  But if it had to happen, he supposes, he’s glad he ended up with this nurse.

 

The nurse is back when he wakes up.  _How do you feel?_

 _Hurts_ , he manages.

 _That’s normal_ , she signs.  _But you should go home later._

He nods.  _Thank you for helping.  I was worried they were going to leave me to die here._

It’s still hard to do one-handed, and he has to use some signs from home, ones that she wouldn’t know, so he’s not surprised when she looks confused.  _Sign again?_ she asks, but when he tries, experimentally, to include his left hand she leans over to stop him.  _No.  Rest it._   So he tries again with just his right hand, and she nods a few times but then shakes her head helplessly, and somehow that makes him laugh. 

She laughs then too.  _Sorry.  It must be hard._

He nods emphatically.  _How long?_ he asks, keeping the question in a short form.

 _Until you heal?_ she asks, and when he nods again, she reaches for the paper.  She writes that it’s a clean simple break, just in one place, so it should be relatively straightforward, but it should still take at least six weeks.  He doesn’t want to make trouble for her—it’s not as if she caused this—but he’s absolutely horrified.  He supposes he can’t help that showing in his face, because she looks sympathetic and pats his good hand again.  _I know.  I’m sorry.  But it won’t be forever._ She looks like she might be about to sign something else, but then her hands still and she shakes her head and starts over.  _What’s your name?_

He spells it out for her—that’s easy enough to do one-handed, at least.  _F-o-x M-u-l-d-e-r.  What’s yours?_

She spells hers out too, her fingers forming the letters slowly.  _D-a-n-a S-c-u-l-l-y._   She smiles.  _It’s nice to meet you._

_It’s nice to meet you too._

She probably has other patients to tend to, and he shouldn’t keep her, but they sit together for a while, trying to get their words across to each other.  It’s not always straightforward, but they make do.  He spells things out, when the signs require both hands or when she gives him one of her questioning looks; she spells too, or she writes her words down on the sheet of paper that lies between them.  Her script is neat and precise; everything about her seems to be that way.  She doesn’t act irritated, either, at the moments when they struggle to communicate: she just shakes her head, at him or at herself, and then they try again.  He’s not used to that, not since he left Martha’s Vineyard.  Back there, it was ordinary enough to be deaf, and everyone knew the signs.  Here on the mainland, he often has to fight to be part of a conversation, and many people are like the doctor and the other nurse, acting as though he’s an inconvenience.  He tells himself that leaving the Vineyard was the right decision, which is true; he wasn’t going to find out anything more about what happened to Samantha there.  He tells himself that since it was the right decision, he can’t let the way people act bother him, and maybe that’s true too.  But this moment with Nurse Scully feels so natural—so much like old times—that he’s forced to admit to himself how much it does bother him, how much he misses that easy communication, that belonging.

 _Why do you know how to sign?_ he asks her.

 _My younger brother_ , she answers.  _He’s deaf.  So we’ve always signed.  We used to have our own, that we made up in our family, and then I learned this, later._   She smiles.  _I don’t know all of your signs, though._

 _Some of them are different,_ he tells her.  _I’m from Martha’s Vineyard.  A lot of people there are deaf.  We have our own system._

 _Oh, that’s right,_ she signs.  _My brother told me.  He was at the school for the deaf in Hartford.  There were people from Martha’s Vineyard there._

The school.  It’s hard to think of it without a pang.  He still remembers the day so clearly—Samantha stepping onto the boat in the sunlight, heading off to school.  And he remembers the days that followed, of course, the way he waited for her promised letters.  It was never something they discussed, at home.  If it weren’t for the way that things grew colder there, for the way that, more and more often, everyone’s hands remained still, he might have believed that his parents had simply forgotten and that he was the only one who remembered that Samantha had ever been.  He remembered, too, his promise to her, the way he had told her that if she were unhappy, he would come and bring her home.  That’s the main reason he’s here now: to make good on his promise if there’s any hope of doing so.  To find out where she really went.  To follow up every clue until he gets somewhere.

It’s a long shot, but he figures he should ask.  He’s pretty sure, at this point, that she was never at the school, and even if she was he might not learn anything here, but he’ll ask.  _When was your brother there?_

 _Right when it opened,_ she signs.  _For a couple of years.  Why?  Were you there?_

 _No.  But maybe he knew my sister.  S-a-m-a-n-t-h-a_ , he spells: those letters, that name, he’s thought them over and over.  _Could you ask him?  I’m not sure she was there, though._

She looks at him with a puzzled face.  _I don’t understand.  Sign again?_

So he spells that out too, that he’s _n-o-t s-u-r-e_.  There’s always a lot to explain when he tells people the story, and there’s even more that he can’t explain at all.

Her face is still confused.  _That’s what I thought you meant.  How can you not be sure?_

 _She disappeared_ , he signs, and Nurse Scully watches him intently.  _She went away for school, and she never came back._

 _That’s terrible._ And he knows she means it, he can see it in her face.  _You couldn’t…_   She shakes her head.  _No one knew anything?  Not at the school or..._ She breaks off again.  _I’m so sorry.  I don’t know what…_

 _I don’t know_ , he signs.  _I was only a boy myself, and no one told me anything.  But now I’m trying to find her._

 _Do you think you can?_ she asks.  _It’s been a long time._

 _I know,_ he signs.  _But you see, I promised her.  Back when she left, I promised I’d come find her if she wasn’t happy.  And so…_ He breaks off now too.  There isn’t anything more he can tell her.  That’s how things are.

She nods though, slowly.  _I understand.  I’ll ask my brother.  I’ll write to him right away.  Here, tell me where you live, so I can send you his answer._

She writes his name down on the paper and then his address, as he spells it out for her.  Below it, she writes his sister’s name as well.  He studies the name, Samantha Mulder in this near stranger’s neat handwriting.  It’s not a lead, or even close to one.  Yet it somehow makes him feel better, less isolated, to know that he’s not the only one thinking about this search.


End file.
